by Pamela Tyner
“Tricia, you’re wasting your time. My mind’s made up.”
She ran her fingertips over his shoulders, her touch soft and caressing. “Maybe I can change it.”
Her hands traveled over his chest. When her fingers grazed his nipple, it ignited a spark that rapidly spread through his entire body.
“You’re…” He had to stop and clear his throat before he could continue. “You’re willing to sleep with me in order to stop me.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I never said that.”
“No, you didn’t say it. But you’re sure as hell implying it.”
Her plan was incredibly transparent and very simple—to distract him, to lure him away from what he intended to do, from what needed to be done. And he had to admit, she was indeed very alluring.
For a brief second, he wondered how far she would take it. Would she be willing to have sex with him in order to accomplish her goal?
She looked up at him with a flirtatious smile. He watched in fascination as her tongue peeked out to brush over her lips.
A part of him wanted to push her away and make the phone call. Another part ached to accept whatever it was that she offered. But they were overruled by the part that was frustrated as hell because he knew he could do neither.
“Damn,” he muttered. He shook his head and blew out a breath of air. “Damn.”
If she was willing to go to such an extreme to keep him from calling David, then the thought of it must really terrify her. He wrapped his hands around hers and removed them from his body. If he didn’t get her hands off him now, she was going to drive him crazy.
“All right. I’ll wait a few more days,” he said, against his better judgment. “As long as you’re willing to agree to my conditions.”
* * * *
Tricia wiped the sweat from her brow, flexed her aching hand, and scowled at the man standing in front of her.
“Come on, Tricia, hit me,” Clint ordered. He stood in the middle of the backyard, his hands planted on his hips, his legs braced apart. His impatience was evident in both his tone and the expression on his face.
“I did.”
“That was a tap, it wasn’t a punch. Try again. Use all your strength. Hit me like you really want to hurt me.”
She took a deep breath. With determination, she balled her hand into a tight fist, drew back her arm, and socked him in the gut.
“Is that the best you can do? You hit like a girl.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I am a girl,” she snapped. Clint wasn’t the only one losing patience. She had punched that rock hard stomach of his half a dozen times, and it hadn’t even fazed him.
His gaze raked down her body and back up again. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten. You may be a girl, but you don’t have to hit like one.”
“I hit you as hard as I could.” She rubbed her stinging knuckles and looked at him suspiciously. “It didn’t hurt at all?”
“Barely felt it.” He rubbed his hand over his face, and then dragged it through his hair. “Okay, obviously you’re not going to be able to knock him off his feet, so I guess we need to change the focus.”
He studied her for a moment as if considering options.
“The first thing you need to concentrate on is surprising him,” Clint said. “The best way to do that is to attack mid-sentence—yours or his, it doesn’t matter.”
“Okay.”
“When attacking you need to zero in on his most vulnerable areas. Do you know what those are?”
“At the top of the list would be the groin, I’d imagine.”
“That’s one of them. Is that where you’d attack first?”
“If I could.”
“Then you’d be making a big mistake. Every guy in the world knows when a woman’s mad that’s the first place she’s going to try to hit him. He’ll be expecting it.”
“Okay, General Patton, where should I attack?”
“The throat’s a good place.” He stepped forward and ran his hand over her throat.
His stroke was gentle, sending a shiver through her body. She silently reprimanded herself for her body’s involuntary reaction to his touch. What was wrong with her?
“There’s no muscle tissue around the throat for protection, so a blow to it is extremely painful.”
“Hmm.”
Now he was brushing the back of his fingers up and down her throat. If he’d only stop it, then maybe she could regain control of her composure. Of course, she could simply ask him to stop, and he would, she had no doubt about that. But then she’d have to face another one of his self-satisfied little smiles like she had experienced the night before. And she absolutely refused to let him know how much his touch affected her.
Her gaze shifted to meet his, and the look in his eyes made it obvious that he knew anyway.
“You can use your fist or your elbow.” He took her arm, bent it, and cupped her elbow in his palm. His thumb stroked her skin. “Your elbow is the hardest point on your body.”
“Really?” It came out as a whisper.
“Mmm-hmm,” he replied softly.
For several seconds they stared into each other’s eyes as he continued to caress her skin. Finally, he dropped her arm. Shifting his gaze away, he cleared his throat. And the spell was broken.
“Okay.” He stopped to clear his throat again. “Okay. Pay attention.” He released a long breath and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Damn, what was I saying?”
Tricia looked away from Clint toward an enormous oak tree in the backyard. Something about the leaves swaying gently in the light breeze helped calm the nervous flutters in her stomach.
It took several seconds of intense focusing for her to remember what he’d been saying. “That I should go for the throat, use my fist or my elbow.”
“Right. If you can find a weapon, go for his knee or his nose. If you break either of those, it hurts like hell.”
She nodded at his instructions and his business-like tone.
“If he’s behind you...” He moved in back of her and wrapped both his hands loosely around her neck. “What would you do in this situation?”
She curled her fingers around his wrist and pulled. No matter how hard she yanked, his hands wouldn’t budge.
“Choose one of my fingers, just one, and pull it back.”
When she followed his instructions, he released the hold and jerked his hands back. “Ouch!”
She turned to face him and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him massaging the abused finger.
“I think you’ve got the idea,” he muttered. “Let’s move on before I lose all feeling in my hand.” He twisted her body around so he was behind her once again. Then he placed his arm around her throat. “What are you going to do now?”
After she had tried unsuccessfully to escape from the chokehold, he led her through a series of complex steps which involved forcing her chin into the inside of his elbow and taking a bite out of his biceps. If she were lucky, this would result in a slight release of pressure, allowing her mere seconds to escape.
Clint forced her to repeat the steps again and again until he was satisfied she could perform the movements correctly and instinctively without any hesitation. He made a point of emphasizing several times that in a chokehold she would only have a few moments to respond before she lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen.
“How did you learn so much about fighting?” Tricia asked. “I’ve never seen you fight.”
“Just because you haven’t seen me do it doesn’t mean I don’t know how.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
He shrugged. “I tended bar for a while when I first moved to Texas,” he said, as if that explained it all. And actually, it did.
“Anything else I should know?” she asked.
“Fight dirty. Do whatever’s necessary in order to escape. Use your teeth.” He rubbed his bicep. “I know you’ve got strong teeth. Use your fingernails, scratch the hell out of his face and eyes
. I know how much damage you can do with those things.”
Mystified by his last comment, she looked at him with her brows wrinkled in confusion. They hadn’t gone over any moves that involved using her fingernails.
His lips curved into a secretive smile. Suddenly, she understood exactly what had prompted the comment. There had been many times when her fingernails had left scratches down his back. The memories it evoked, memories of pleasure as his body had joined with hers, had her breathing accelerating. Then Clint winked at her, and she was barely able to breathe at all.
* * * *
Several hours later, Tricia entered the barn just as Clint finished saddling the horses. They were beautiful, muscular animals. One was solid reddish brown, while the other had a dark brown body with a black tail and mane.
“You ready to go?” Clint asked.
“Yep.”
He pushed his hat back and examined her face. “Well, you don’t have to look so happy about it.”
“I don’t mind. After all, it was one of your conditions.” Per the decree of Clint Owens, if he was further than shouting distance from the house, she was required to be with him.
He rubbed a hand over one of the horses’ neck. “Come and meet Aphrodite.”
Tricia walked over and stroked the horse’s nose. “Aphrodite?”
“That’s right. The goddess of love and sexual desire.”
“That seems like a pretty unusual name for a horse.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t name her. My uncle had a thing for Greek mythology.”
She jerked her chin in the direction of his horse. “What’s his name?”
“Dionysus.”
Tricia searched her memory but came up blank. In one of her high school literature classes, they had studied Greek myths briefly. But that had been a decade ago, and even then she hadn’t been able to remember all the gods, goddesses, demi-gods. There had to be hundreds of them.
“The god of wine and ecstasy,” Clint supplied.
“Oh. Well, then. Sex and ecstasy. The two sort of seem to fit each other.”
“Yeah, they do.” Clint glanced at her, his brow wrinkled in thought. “I’ll be right back.”
He headed toward a room at the side of the barn and returned carrying a white straw cowboy hat which he promptly plopped on top of her head. The hat was so large it fell all the way to the bridge of her nose, completely covering her eyes. She shoved the brim back and looked at him to find an amused grin on his face.
“I don’t need a hat.” When she released her hold on it, it immediately fell back over her eyes again.
With a chuckle, he plucked it from her head. “Yes, you do. Otherwise you’re going to end up with a sunburned face. But I don’t think you can wear this one.”
He turned and headed back to the room again. As he walked away, Tricia stared at his back and his earlier comment about her tendency to scratch when aroused drifted through her mind. Her gaze traveled lower and landed on his rear. While she had never left scratches on that part of his body, she did remember digging her fingers in as she’d urged…
Horrified, she jerked her gaze away. What are you doing looking at the man’s butt and thinking about urging?
Clint returned, this time with a baseball cap. After adjusting it to the smallest size possible, he stuck in on her head. “Much better,” he said with approval.
They led the horses outside, and Clint waited until Tricia had mounted then adjusted the length of her stirrups.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a horse,” she admitted as she peered down at the ground. It was much further away than she’d remembered. Then again, this was a big horse.
“Aphrodite’s very gentle. She’ll take good care of you.”
Tricia only hoped she could remember what to do. She hadn’t ridden much, and her riding skills had barely qualified as adequate.
Clint climbed onto his horse in one quick, smooth move. He clucked and Dionysus started off in a slow walk. Tricia squeezed her legs against Aphrodite’s sides, praying the horse would recognize that as the signal to go. She breathed a sigh of relief when Aphrodite moved forward, following behind Dionysus.
As they rode, she stole a sidelong glance at Clint. He sat straight and tall in the saddle and looked like he was exactly where he belonged, exactly where he wanted to be. He rode with an air of arrogance, cockiness. She considered this and then decided minutes later that it wasn’t really arrogance. It was confidence. And maybe pride.
She looked out over the pasture and couldn’t help but admit he did have something to be proud of. More times than she cared to remember, she had seen the Oklahoma landscape when it had been dry and dusty. But apparently this year Mother Nature had smiled on them and blessed them with an ample supply of rain. Lush, green grass, several inches high, covered the pasture and rippled slightly in the breeze. She took a deep breath. Fresh, clean air filled her lungs, so unlike the heavy air in Florida which had been clogged with pollution and the smell of the sea.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Clint asked.
She shifted her eyes to him briefly to find him staring in the same direction she had been looking at. Returning her gaze to the pasture, she replied dryly, “Oh, it’s orgasmic.”
Now why on earth had she said that? All the man did was voice exactly what she had been thinking herself. Would it have been so hard just to agree with him?
Maybe she’d despised him for so long, it was no longer possible for her to be civil toward him for more than a few minutes at a time. Or perhaps it was simply because, for the first time in years, she was free to disagree, to be testy, without any thought of the consequences. It could be that she was just enjoying that newfound freedom—at his expense. Then again, possibly it was her way of trying to put some distance between them. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t fair to him.
She glanced over at him, uncertain of what she’d find in his expression. Frustration? Irritation maybe?
What she saw was the corners of his mouth twitching in an obvious effort to suppress a grin.
“It certainly doesn’t take much to satisfy you these days, does it?” he asked in an amused tone.
“It must have been all that talk about desire and ecstasy. Apparently it just got me all excited.”
“Hmm. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” His tone bordered on seductive, and he said the words almost as if it were a promise.
She pressed a hand to her belly in an effort to calm the flutter of excitement that he had incited.
They must have ridden for an hour at least. Tricia had about decided there weren’t any cows anywhere on the ranch, and Clint was just delusional. As she considered voicing her suspicions, they reached a pasture with cows. There must have been thousands of them. Well, hundreds at least. Black cows, each of them with bright red ear tags, grazing happily.
For a while they remained on the horses, riding slowly through the herd as Clint did nothing more than observe the cattle. When he stopped and dismounted, she followed his example. While she stretched the kinks out of her shoulders and back, he walked among the cows, occasionally stopping to examine one more closely.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Just checking. Making sure everything’s as it should be.”
They looked perfectly fine to her—just like cows should look. But it took him another half an hour to reach the same conclusion.
At last he mounted his horse and said, “All right, let’s go.”
“Do you do this every day?” she asked as they headed back toward the house.
“Yep.”
“What else do you do?”
“Well, this is a lazy month. We just finished breeding season. Calves will be born in the spring. And in the fall we round them all up and do branding, vaccinations, dehorning, castration.”
Tricia cringed at the thought of it. She had never witnessed such an event, but nevertheless she could almost picture the scene and hear the terrified baby co
ws bawling in pain.
Clint continued, “At the same time we’ll sort out the ones that are ready to be sold.”
“Who’s we?”
“I have some friends who help me out. Then I help them. It works out well. Keeps me from having to hire anyone, which I can’t afford to do right now.”
“How did you learn to do all this? I didn’t know you knew anything about cattle.”
“There’s just all kinds of things you don’t know about me, isn’t there?” He lifted a shoulder. “When I was a kid I spent a few summers up here with my uncle. I learned a little then, but not nearly enough. So I read books, searched the internet, made friends with the neighbors, asked a lot of stupid questions, made a lot of stupid mistakes.”
Tricia made a sound of disbelief which stopped just short of being a very unladylike snort. “You read a book?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “People change,” he offered in the way of explanation.
“Yes, I know, but this from the man who used to tease me because I’d rather read the book than see the movie. Who couldn’t understand why on earth I’d want to read a book I’d already read before. After all, I knew what happened, so what was the point in rereading it?”
His lips curved up. “The Crucible.”
Those two words shocked her into silence. Not only had he remembered the conversation, he’d even remembered the title of the book.
“It’s a good book. I read it myself a few years ago.” He cut his gaze in her direction. “But I only read it once.”
When they arrived back at the barn, they worked together silently unsaddling and tending to the horses. Tricia brushed Aphrodite, smiling when the horse leaned into her as if to say that feels good, give me more. A few feet away, Clint cleaned Dionysus’s hoofs. As soon as he finished with one, the horse automatically picked up the next leg for him, just as Aphrodite had done earlier. Clearly, they were very well trained animals.
Once the grooming was complete, the horses were turned out in a pasture behind the barn, joining two other horses which were already grazing there.
Tricia and Clint leaned against the fence, their gazes fixed on the horses.